I wish Final Fantasy 14 (well any MMO to be completely honest) would just completely rip off everything about BDO that isn't the combat/cash shop gated side grades.
Seriously. Black Desert Online is an incredible game that is just ruined by an insane experience grind post level 56 (were talking weeks per level up here) and other slight money gouging tactics that prevent you from fully optimizing your game time.
The good stuff though? Jeez I've never played a game like it.
The profession system is so.freaking.robust, it's not like most games where you pick from like 2 main professions and a few sub professions. Nope it just splits the whole thing off into "life skills" and you can use and level up any profession at your leisure. The catch is that executing an action in most professions (especially gathering) uses up a point of "energy"
How do you get more "energy" You explore the world! Talk to every NPC and have conversations with them. There is sort of like a index you can fill out with locations, topography (being at the base of a mountain wont cut it!
) , NPC's etc. The more of the world you experience the more Energy your toons get. Furthermore through having favorable conversations with NPC's you can gain favor with them for better prices, and even unlock quests and new dialogue which may increase your chances of gaining better standing with other NPC's.
With that in mind back to professions, they also did a great job of making every profession worth while. In fact some of the richest players in the game are near maxed out in several professions. Every item you can gather or generate has value, and if it doesn't sell well on the market there is another profession called "Trading" which is great for offloading items you don't want to put in the market place, which if you level it up enough is actually an incredible way to get rich if you pair with another profession and trade off items you craft in mass.
Due to the way the professions and the NPC's interact with each other it also feels like a real world. If you really want to make the most of it you need to experience as much as you can in the world and go exploring. I can't tell you how awesome it felt when I made my first little raft and was able to go out into the ocean. I literally spent 2 hours out there just goofing off, my mind was even more blown when I almost got killed by a big ass shark thing, or when I realized I could get off my boat and dive and there were items to gather even at the bottom lol.
The real thing that just blows my mind is the "Worker" system. You can if you want basically become a slave driver and have an auto gathering and crafting system empire rolling while you are online (This is both amazing and a problem which I'll get to in a second).
So to explain the mechanics there is a third energy system called "Contribution Points" , in BDO quests don't give experience at all they give Contribution Experience. Every time you level up your contribution you get 1 point etc. IIRC you can get up to around 250 but there are some people with much more.
So in every city there is a housing system. You can rent out houses with various functions and you pay for it with Contribution. These functions range from being Tailor huts, to Blacksmiths and importantly Worker Housing.
In every city there is also a Work Manager NPC who you can purchase randomly Generated Workers or also Workers that other players have leveled up. There are 3 types with varying pros and cons, basically goblins are fast, humans are balanced, giants are slow but can get better luck gathering.
Every time the Workers complete a task they get experience and can level up and learn new attributes and perks which may make them better suited for different tasks. The things you can make these guys do is almost limitless they can do basically all crafting (they can even make boats), they can gather , cook etc.
On top of the housing system is a "Node" System it's basically areas in the world map that branch out from the City's that you can send a worker to to gather. Different nodes have different items to get some are amazing, some are terrible.
The cool thing is that in order to be able to send a worker there you need to unlock the node. You have to physically go out there and open it up, and several are surrounded by really really tough monsters. Additionally in order for a node to be active it must have all nodes between it and the city active as well.
So if I have a Node that I want thats far left of City B, Ideally I would want to send a worker I purchased and housed in City B to go there. Since sending a worker from City A would require me to connect every node between City A and B together on top of the nodes between the Node and City B.
Here is an image of my nodes in the south west portion of the map to give you an idea
So this system ends up being a cool game with in the game, because if you really really want to optimize your worker routes you have to account for travel speed, managing your contribution points for housing and nodes and also setting up optimal paths. And of course having to go out in the world to explore and find said nodes. It's very neat and really feels nice once you have an optimal empire up and running.
So for the most part Workers generally gather slower than you do in any one task. Of course the difference being is that Workers don't have "Energy Points" to worry about and well you can have like 30 of them out at once so it adds up over time.
Here in lies the problem with the worker empire though (and to an extent the game). They only work when you are online. This has lead to basically every serious player of the game basically never logging out. Since Gold is how you gain strength in BDO and not necessarily leveling up, in order to get the gold and keep up with the economy you have to keep the empire running constantly.
Which is well pretty shit lol.
Over all though the game is wonderful in it's own weird way. I honestly just can't downplay the sense of wonder I had in this game when I first went out on the ocean or when I caught my first horse. The life Skills side of the game is just so good and it really makes you feel like you can do anything you want. It's just brought down by tiny things that add up so fast.
I really wish more games would rip off its systems lol.
